Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 01:16:36 +0000 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: jim brighton Subject: Chasing Red-necks in Maryland, March 2nd, 2003 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hans Holbrook and I started the day in his kitchen drinking tea and trying to decide the best way to spend the day bird wise. We decided to go after as many Red-neck Grebes as possibe in as many counties as possible. Our first stop was Elkhorn Lake which produced a nice drake Wood Duck. Next we stopped at Duckett's Res. on John Brown Rd. where we had Cm. Mergs (23), and other waterfowl. On a pond off Zion Rd. Montg. Co. we had a drake Redhead. Things started picking up at Black Hills where we had Red-nk. Grebe (25), Pied-billed Grebe (6), Horned Grebe (1), Pintail (2), Gadwall (5). Then we went to the mouth of the Monocacy where we had Red-nk Grebes (4) swim out of the Monocacy and into the Potomac. We also had Lssr. Scaup(2) and Wood Duck (5). At Point of Rocks we had a female Long-tailed Duck swimming off one of the mid-stream islands. We deided to go up into Washington Co. where things started going horribley wrong. After trudging in calf deep snow up the river at Weaverton where we saw Cm. Mergs (12) and Cm. Goldeneye (8), we made it back to the truck only to burn up the transmission trying to get out of the snow bank where we had parked. Fearing that the day was over we limped back to Columbia with a high reving engine and a very scared Hans (the money it was going to cost to fix his Dad's truck). But a burned out transmission couldn't stop the great Maryland Red-neck race. After a lunch of tater-tots we jumped in my bitchin' Cavalier and headed to Fort McHenry where we had Red-nk Grebes (8) and a Surf Scoter. While we were looking a the Grebes a really good looking girl walked up to Hans and myself and asked us at what we were looking. I then got to observe Hans' extremely deft handeling of getting a complete stranger completely insorbed in the wonderful act of Birdwatching. He left with a number. Then we raced to Lapidum where we had 9 more Grebes. I got extremely irrate when I realized I would have tp pay $4 to cross the bridge from Havre de Grace to Perryville. I would think Perryville's roads would be a little nicer. On the VA Hospital grounds we didn't see anything different from Chris Starling's post except for a single male Red-breasted Merg. in with some Commons. We did miss Starling's Merling, although we did get another Red-neck Grebe. Then my car overheated and we scraped the last of our pennies together to buy a gal. of antifreeze and a six pack of Bud. All in all we had 27 species of waterfowl for the weekend and a total of 54 Red-necked Grebes in nine counties. It was definently a very memorable weekend. Jim Brighton jdbrighton3@hotmail.com Trappe, Md (posted in Columbia) _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================